Anna M. Auletta, “Anne” to her family and friends, died peacefully at The Virginian in Fairfax, VA, on the afternoon of September 29, 2020. She was 96 years old. Anna with her husband and sons, relocated to the Mount Vernon area of Fairfax County in 1961. There she raised her three boys, was a wife and homemaker, and full-time Human Resources Specialist with the federal government. Anna resided in the family home in Collingwood-on-the Potomac until 2010 when she and husband Anthony Sr. moved to The Virginian senior living community.
Anna shared her life for 63 years with her devoted husband who passed away in the fall of 2016. She and Anthony met on a blind date and after just a handful of dates, were married in the spring of 1953. Anthony‘s Army service took Anna and her growing family to Fort Gordon, GA, and Scofield Barracks on Oahu, HI. Her greatest pride and joy were her surviving sons Anthony Jr., Vincent, and Richard, daughters-in-law Alicia and Julia, and grandchildren Annie and Alex; embracing each with unconditional love and support.
Anna’s life is remarkable and memorable for her accomplishments as a woman, mother, and professional. Her parents were Ukrainian immigrants who first settled in Pennsylvania. Her mother Anastasia Wanca married Peter Warchol in the fall of 1913. Shortly thereafter Peter perished in a coal mine collapse. As was sometimes the custom, Peter’s brother Dmytro married Anastasia in the spring of 1917. Anna’s brother Michael was the first child of this marriage. Michael preceded her in death in 1986. Anna was born in 1924 at the family’s Tonnelle Avenue home in Jersey City, NJ. This location also housed a number of businesses during her early life and her parent’s marriage including a butcher shop, tavern, and gas station. The modest gas station remained Anastasia’s until the mid-1970’s. Though Anastasia and Dymtro’s marriage ended in the early 1950’s, Anna stayed close to her parents making frequents visits to both with her sons. She enjoyed visits to Dmytro’s small farm near Kingston, NY. These visits reminded her of the time she spent as a young girl in Rosendale, NY. Though born healthy, at about age three she began suffering bouts of asthma. During these years, she would stay in Rosendale with an elderly farm couple to escape the polluted air of Jersey City.
Inspired by her mother’s love and hard work, Anna became an accomplished student, professional, and matriarch. She excelled academically throughout her education. Graduating from Dickinson HS in Jersey City, NJ, in June 1942, she was recognized with its “Most Representative Girl in the Graduation Class” medal. She went on to Columbia University graduating in 1946 with a BS. As a single working woman, her early career was with Colgate-Palmolive and Maidenform. During this time she attended New York University at night and attained her MBA in 1951.
Following her marriage and as her three sons grew, she restarted her career. She returned to the workplace first part-time with “The American Scholar” magazine published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In 1966 she returned full-time to Human Resources and Personnel Management at the Atomic Energy Commission commuting from Collingwood to Germantown, MD, in the family station wagon. In 1969 she joined the still new Department of Housing and Urban Development Headquarters in Washington, DC, as a Human Resources Specialist for executive performance evaluation. Retiring from civil service in 1986, she continued to work part-time for several years as a private secretary and personal assistant.
In retirement Anna enjoyed good health, traveling the world with her husband, visiting her grandchildren, and adding beauty to her home. Though reluctantly agreeing to needed heart bypass surgery at age 70, she toughed it out and rehabbed to fully recover and enjoy her many more years. Anna, with Anthony Sr. as a sometimes reluctant traveler, cruised and visited many locales including Alaska and the Canadian Rockies, United Kingdom, Turkey and the Mediterranean, Mid-East and the Pyramids of Egypt, and Russia. Florida was a frequent get away as the grandchildren arrived and grew.
Anna loved her home filling it with new and antique furnishings, decorative art objects, old Persian rugs, and clocks. New and old, big and small, there was always a clock chiming the hour in her home. Her home was a place for animals too. Over the years she shared it with Trinka her Norwegian Elkhound, and Zsa Zsa and Anya her adopted cats. She tended to the wild visitors also. Her yard always had ample seed and peanuts for the birds and squirrels. The local raccoons and skunks found treats and cat food on her back porch.
More than a house, Anna created a home and hearth for her boys and husband. Even as each of her sons made their own lives and homes, it remained the gathering place for holidays, birthdays, or whenever the brothers were in town. Her kitchen was the hub of her home. First remodeled by Anthony Sr. for her in the 1960’s and then again in the 1980’s adding a bay window to overlook the garden and bird feeders in the backyard. Her kitchen was where her family gathered virtually every night for dinner in good times, sad times, and turbulent times as her sons grew and found their way. Some were full of laughter. Some full of silence. But each dinner brought us together at the end of most every day we shared there. It was a place for home-made and indelible sensory memories: manicotti, lasagna, meatballs and sauces; her mother’s recipe Ukrainian-style cheese and sauerkraut perohiyi browning in butter and onions, jellied pig’s knuckles, southern-style Fried Chicken, birthday cherry pies and rum cakes, and often at Easter, the smell of bee’s wax heating in an old metal bottle cap on the electric range to make traditional pysanki (Easter eggs).
Remember Anna’s life as a thing of beauty —the dreams of a young girl fulfilled. She would not want you to grieve, rather celebrate her memory and find solace in her final peace. Rejoice in her long life and the joy she brought to the lives around her. Anna will be buried next to her husband Anthony Sr. at Arlington National Cemetery.

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